How Much Time and Energy Do We Waste Toggling Between Applications?

It is estimated that unnecessary interruptions and the time needed to get our brain back on track after being distracted from our original task now consume an average of 28 percent of our working day.

Our brains can take in millions of bits of information but can only actually process a few dozen per second. When we say we’re multitasking, what we’re really doing is switching back and forth between tasks very quickly. Unfortunately, we’re not computers adept at parallel processing. We end up spending all our energy alternating between tasks, ins

In order to move from one task to another, we must effectively tell ourselves, “I want to do this now instead of that.” This process is known as “goal shifting” or “task shifting.” It creates something called “switching time,” which is the increment of time it takes us to move from one source of focus to another.

they found that when subjects switched back and forth between two separate problems, it took them 25 percent longer to complete them than to do the tasks sequentially, one at a time. The difference was the cumulative switching time required during multitasking.

Up to 80 percent of office workers (according to one estimate) suffer from something called continuous partial attention.10 We’ll scan our email, write something down, check Twitter, and do it all over again, never really focusing on any specific task. In this state of perpetual distraction, breathing becomes shallow and erratic. Sometimes we won’t